Michael Hardner

Let's go step-by-step. I deposit $100 in a 0% interest account. The bank can now loan out $1000 - which it does, and is paid back $1000 plus $50 interest. But the original $1000 is no longer in circulation. The bank can lend out another $1000 but it's no longer in circulation.

If you don't need to convince people then why are you here on a discussion board ? How does it need to change ? I'm still trying to understand this idea that 'all money is created through debt' - whether it's true, and whether it's important. The more I look at it, it seems that the 'created money' that is spoken of disappears again once it is paid back. It sounds like we're talking about the amount of money in circulation, which comes not just from loans but from other sources. I haven't been successful at getting an answer yet, although I'm learning from this thread. Why don't you give a concrete example of how it would work - from the point of view of an opportunity waiting to be realized, through to the realization of that opportunity. Then we can examine this case and see how things change.

Science can say what it likes: I've been stuck on the ceiling since yesterday ! I agree with the scientists, but the emergence of the internet and of stupid cable news channels has created a new skepticism towards all authority: political, religious and scientific authority among other types. The scientists can report science and just walk away, but if they do then they're leaving it to the mongrels of information to use it to their own ends. They need to realize that part of what they do is communicating their findings to the broader public, where public policy is involved. And that involves engaging across the political spectrum. If one throws up their arms and says "nobody of THAT political stripe has any integrity" then they're giving up. Furthermore, they're indulging in a kind of vanity that says "my way of thinking is the only right way". This is a disease of both sides, currently. We're not used to having our political views challenged, and we haven't had that since broadcast media starting fighting political fights for us by proxy, IMO. The strife we're seeing now is no different from the unleashing of ethnic tensions that happened in Eastern Europe when Communist dictatorships fell: we're no longer under the authority of large broadcast media entities who frame the political debate - we do it ourselves via the web, Fox News and so on. The power is coming back to the people, so we have to engage with each other in order to ensure that good communication and good compromises happen. In the case of GW, scientists have to find opinion-makers across the political spectrum who are open-minded, honest and reasonable and make them part of the process. From being on boards like these for 12 years (and MLW for 7 years) I can see that most of the time the truth falls in between the views of the political extremes. In this example, I think the science appears to be sound, but the communication and public engagement has been mishandled and the solutions proposed are not yet realistic enough to be adopted.

There isn't ? Uh oh ( I just flew up to the ceiling...)

Obama hates baseball because he hates America. My aunt Fern from South Lahoma emailed me that he's trying to make Jai-alai the national sport because he's a socialist and a witch.

No, no one does. There is also a consensus on AGW. But to say it's settled is to misunderstand and misrepresent how science considers things. It's done by people who want to push the public towards a political end.

The fact that Phil Jones says the science isn't settled means that we can probably stop using that phrase to sarcastically represent the position of climate science.

Furthermore, he's demonstrating why his contributions are a distraction here. This is a discussion board, and yet when we constantly give Mr. Canada feedback about his false generalizations and poor arguments, he ignores them and comes back with an assertion that the CBC is brainwashing us. I don't agree with the CBC all the time either, but at least they tend to post facts - not opinions as facts.

And he wasn't about 'tax cuts' either, but no one would try to say that he could have had a position on such things in his time. There was no democracy in place, there was an occupying force. His teachings, in the context of that era, were very socially minded. The spirit of Christianity is lost on many Christians, especially the judgmental and unsympathetic caricatures that seem to be everywhere.

Those number still indicate that Republicans make up something like 2/3 of the tea partiers. So if they go as a separate party, the republicans will lose 2/3 of 28%, the democrats will lose 1/3 of 28% as far as I can see. The same type of deal caused Ross Perot to do fatal damage to George Bush Sr. in 1992. Obama's approval rating isn't that bad (45% was the last one I saw) for someone mired in a recession, and who just passed a bill that is highly controversial. Things are looking good for him currently, even if they lose both houses in November. And if they don't, then they will beat expectations...

Source: Ontario Power Authority - Integrated Power System Plan

I hardly keep any of my money in the bank, though. Practically all of my savings is in RRSPs, invested in Canadian companies. And, again, who cares if money originally came from King Charles ? He got his investment back, and what's left went to the person who earned it through enterprise or labour. Let's leave the explanations of why the system causes recessions and depressions until later. Many on this thread still aren't convinced of the premise that all money is created through debt.

See, if I find somebody on TV who believes everything I do, I usually turn the channel.

I suppose that I also like fictional characters and believe them some of the time.

That's a foolish thing to do, because he doesn't tell the truth. He told USA Today that he believes in Global Warming yet he makes fun of it on his show.

I can't tell who's who in that video. Lots of anger there, though.

No... it's crazier than that. The Texas candidate Deb Medina was advocating pulling out of national agreements such as NAFTA. Once that starts being put out there, the money will not support these people.

As I said:

Beck is basically a character in a fictional television show anyway. He has already shown that he will say anything to get viewers. I think it's sad that so many people think that he's a real person. Maybe if the character says enough offensive things, though, he will lose viewers and be taken off the air - or at least have a cute child character added to the show as often happens in the dying days...

Maybe, maybe not. Isn't money circulated ? It could have been used to pay back a debt, pay out a bank dividend, given as a gift, deposited in a bank account and loaned out again.

Back to the thread - do we have sources for those numbers posted earlier ?

I agree with that, if you qualify the 'vast majority of information' by saying 'credible information' and so-forth. There's a lot of misinformation out there thrown out to cloud the issue, but it's not credible.

But anyway, that's all thread drift. Argus - your post was informative. Do you have links ? I'm glad that there seems to be more interest in this topic than there was in healthcare. Let's see what information is out there for Ontario Hydro.

I dunno, Moon. I sure don't hear the poor themselves complaining about corporate taxes. I hear the NDP complaining about them, but then again they had a platform of keeping lower corporate taxes than in the US. The truly poor - we don't hear from them much IMO.

It's mainly for future reference. We have many sex scandals still to come before they stop being news.